That wasn’t all. The Gond tribal, a resident of the thickly forested Pushwara village in the restive Bastar region, was then told that another cop would knock on a co-villager’s door the next morning with some more surprise gifts!

While villagers are wondering what has caused this change of heart among the authorities, police say it’s an exercise to win over forested people in order to break the decade-old intelligence network of Maoist rebels.

Sapan Chaudhary, the policeman who visited Watti, for instance, is station-incharge of Dhamtari and is doing a six-week training along with 587 cops at Maoist-infested Kanker district’s Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CTJWC).Read the rest of this entry »